Banking Domain Primer

November 16, 2016

By Zenobia Sethna

The Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI) sector is the backbone of the Indian economy employing approximately 4.5 million professionals. If you are looking for a career in Finance, you will see vacancies listing “Banking Domain Knowledge” as a requisite. But what does it mean? Banking itself can be of multiple types based on products and services on offer and the type of customers serviced.

For simplicity, one may define banking domain knowledge as the body of knowledge dealing with how different banking segments operate – across customers, sales & distribution, products & services, people, process and technology. This definition basically covers the end to end functioning of any bank.

Let’s take a closer look at the operating model of a bank. • Banking Segments – Broadly we have four types of banks: retail banks, corporate banks, investment banks and private banks. These are known as Banking segments. • Clients – These are the customers who buy the bank’s products or services. These may be individuals looking to open a bank account or Institutions or other Banks looking for more corporate solutions or ways to invest their funds. • Sales and Distribution Channels – This includes how the bank reaches out to its customers to make sales. This could be through emails, phone calls, on the Internet, TV ads etc. • Products and Services – Products and services are the things the bank sells to customers for a fee. These would vary according to the banking segment. In retail banks, we would have products like deposit accounts and loans. • People, process and technology – Finally we have the three components that underpin all of the above. These are people, processes and technology. People includes job roles and responsibilities, organization structures; processes define how customer transactions are fulfilled and what procedures to follow, while technology defines the IT infrastructure and systems that support the business.

Imarticus Learning offers many courses on Investment Banking and Retail Banking covering the multi-faceted functioning of these banks and their products and services. Contact us to know more.